NHC 2014 Seminars

Of course having access to beer samples all day is cool, but only a true beer geek can appreciate the variety and depth of the seminars put on. I had to plan out how I was going to make it to everything I wanted to see, but there were at times, four seminars in the same time slot.

Fortunately, one of the perks of being an AHA member is that the AHA posts the seminar material online so you can read up on what you missed later. Even if you didn’t make it to NHC, this is an awesome resource. There were plenty that I didn’t get to go to, but you can’t be everywhere at the same time.

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Here is a recap of the seminars I attended:

Founders is one of my favorite breweries, so it was cool to hear from the men behind the curtain. We were a bit late, but still got to hear enough of the info. I was also grateful for them sharing the recipe for the Oak Aged Rye IPA brewed just for NHC. I’m not a huge hop head, but Rye IPA’s are one of my favorite varieties. I prefer my Rye IPA’s to be higher than normal on the rye and lower than normal on the IBU’s, so I didn’t find the Founders version to my taste, but that’s why I brew my own. Because I can!

I had heard Ron Pattinson on a Beersmith podcast earlier this year and it was fascinating. Some of the pictures of the old breweries were neat to see and it was interesting to see how different breweries adapted to tax laws, ingredient availability and their various systems of measurement.

My favorite type of beer to brew and drink is lagers. As Jason Oliver and Warren Haskell said in their presentation, lagers are fun because they present their own unique technical challenges. The biggest takeaway I had from the presentation was their note that on their step mashes, they immediately raise the temperature after mash in, instead of leaving it to sit at one temperature for a rest. I think I’ll try that on my next brew.

I have to say that even after listening to the seminar, I’m still of the opinion that doing a step mash is the most effort I want to put into the mash. I realize that there are other flavors that may come out of a decoction mash, but for me, I’m not trying to win awards. I may try one at some point. Never say never!

This was a very interesting experiment that Matthew took on. He had the sample beers there to try and I have to say that there should be some more investigating to this. My observations so far from what I’ve read, heard and tried are that hop usage at lower temperatures seems to provide a much smoother bitterness. The premise here is that he would take the wort through a sort of hop filter and they would never need to go into the kettle.

There was a lot discussed in this seminar before tasting, but basically what was presented were a piece of salami and a pickle coupled with two beers, Bell’s Oarsman Ale and Short’s Huma Lupa Licious. The Oarsman is a 10 IBU, 4% ABV that has been inoculated with lactic and the Short’s is a 96 IBU, 7.7% ABV beer. We’ll call them LOW and HIGH, so you can substitute with any similar beer.

You can try these experiments at home kids! Try a bite of a pickle after LOW and it takes most of the taste away. A bite of the salami before LOW causes it to essentially taste like nothing.

It was noted that the salami has that umami taste and can calm the bitterness of HIGH. The 96 IBU’s was hard to beat, so after a bit, you actually feel that bitterness come back. The pickle also calmed the bitterness.

The point was that what you are eating with your beer can influence how you interpret the taste of the beer.

This is something I’m not quite good at. I don’t add a lot to my explanation of things. To me the color is pink. To someone else, it is salmon. When I taste a beer that I think is good, I just know it and can’t necessarily explain why. This seminar got me at least thinking of how to explain what I am tasting in a more descriptive way.